Since this site had its makeover, from what I can see the postings have gone down considerably. It’s like tumbleweed gathering ... It is just hard work negotiating from place to place, sometimes it just doesn’t respond, then I click return to Forum and it takes me to Belgium. It appears to be so slow and I’m just so frustrated I give up. And it looks like a lot of people have also done the same. Is anybody at Expatica picking up on this?
Franklin said:
Matt likes it this way.
So I've gathered. 
canuckywoman said:
Franklin said:
Matt likes it this way.
So I've gathered.
I think the new format is terrible, posting is way down, who has 10 minutes to go from site to site just to say something. Really dissappointing changes, not user friendly at all! Used to be a great site!
canuckywoman said:
It appeals to those who are new here. Which is probably good enough for them.
Weeelll... I'm new here, and I don't know if I'd agree with that 100%...
mischief said:
canuckywoman said:
It appeals to those who are new here. Which is probably good enough for them.Weeelll... I'm new here, and I don't know if I'd agree with that 100%...
I mean NEW-new...like as in you don't remember the old site! But maybe your opinion is more valid than ours. I've been through too many incarnations of Facebook where everyone does a week worth of whinging whenever anything changes, and then shuts up all happy until the next change that I've learnt that maybe we shouldn't be listened to!
peony said:
Well, I think the old site was better. MAybe not as "nice looking" but it functioned better. My biggest pet peeves are -its slow -when i hit back, it takes me to "forum master home page" which includes all expatica countries -hence, if I want to actually go back to Netherlands forum, I have to choose first "netherlands" and then "forum" -quoting function is cr**. only one quote available, no cross-thread quoting and when you use it it looks bad and often incorporates my reply into the quote. -i use firefox and reply window is especially jumbled (is that a word?) -random forums have invisible postings. you know when you are on forum home page and you can see on the right which was last post - well every day one or two forums have no postings. I guess thats it - maybe whoever is maintaing this page can check it out. If redesign includes maintaining service in the package, than expatica is not getting what they paid for.
I found both the old and new site slow...and the missing postings usually happen when spam has been deleted.
But yeah, totally agree that I want access to the Netherlands site only without scrolling scrolling scrolling...it's absolutely annoying. Not everyone bounces around from country to country for their job, and most of us only live in one country at a time! So I don't see the point of making us all scroll through all the countries...
mikeyt said:
I've pretty much given up on this site due to the format and the significantly lower level of participation. I'm not a fan of facebook so maybe that explains it...
Ya, same for me too...
Franklin said:
I get the impression Matt got tired of dealing with forum business, and just decided to kill it off.
Well it somewhat contradicts what they want to promote to the advertisers, doesn't it? One big happy family of highly skilled migrants spending gobs of money? Then those EU migrants and students and import brides and whatnot come in here and mess up the demographics!
peony said:
Its kind of contra-productive though if they are really only after highly skilled migrants - they are at work and presumably their high paying companies would sort out any problems they might be having in the Netherlands. I mean just look at the commercials on the header (probably the highest paying advertiser) - its HSBC, offshore bank where you need to deposit 60 000 pounds just to open the account. How many forum members would do that?
The advertisers hope ALL of us would. 
Hello all,
looks like it's time for me to respond...
Let me discuss each of your main points in turn:
Speed - I agree! This is something that we are struggling with across all Expatica's systems. It is not down to a new community software, in fact it is all the other systems we have that are just not able to cope with the traffic. Too much concurrent traffic leads to a serious slowdown and even server crashes. Because everything lives on the same server, that means the community slows down too. The only way to really address this in the long run is to build a new system … and we are recoding as I type.
Why isn't all the Netherlands stuff in the same place? - The best advice was from pepec "http://community.expatica.com/forums?category=3 Bookmark that link". That will get you to the NL forums (only) every time. We also made sure that the menu link "Forum" on each country home page leads to the relevant country forums directly. Also if you "watch a topic" then you'll get an email about new posts and the updates button at the top of your page will show red.
"Matt has decided to kill off the forums" - … Now this one hurts because I have genuinely tried to find a solution to give you guys the best social network we can. I can accept that "change is not always for the better" etc. and also that the forum itself doesn't provide all the functionality of the last one… it is quite a change but please bear in mind that this is not just a new forum, the old forum has been replaced with an entire social network system. The flip side of your complaints is that we have a more efficient anti spam system than even before, instant messaging, events, blogs, groups… For sure some of the forum posting has been replace by the use of these tools instead.
It's quite around here - This follows on from my last point and may indeed be true in the NL forum, but in the community at large it has never been busier. More visits, more page views, more members and I have had people coming up to me personally at our fairs with nothing but good things to say about the new community… In terms of user engagement the new community (as a whole) is a successes.
Lastly let me say sympathetic to the veteran members who enjoyed the old forum … but that old system just could not continue. Expatica had been locked into it for years and could not even update it or make any real progress building our community while it was in place … we HAD to change. I truly believe it was for the better and I also know that in general we have succeeded in bringing the community elements of Expatica up to date. We are to only fully fledged social network for expats out there and we can now actually think about making some progress … but for sure there is plenty more work to do.
Well I guess that's it, I have tried to answer everything as honestly as I can and I hope you can at least accept that I am genuinely trying to improve things. But naturally you must feel free to rebut 
As always I am here for your questions. Just send me a message or email me directly on community@expatica.com. The moderators amongst you can IM me too.
Regards,
Matt (Admin)
canuckywoman said:
peony said:
Its kind of contra-productive though if they are really only after highly skilled migrants - they are at work and presumably their high paying companies would sort out any problems they might be having in the Netherlands. I mean just look at the commercials on the header (probably the highest paying advertiser) - its HSBC, offshore bank where you need to deposit 60 000 pounds just to open the account. How many forum members would do that?
The advertisers hope ALL of us would.
All these adverts are completely wasted on me, I never look at any of them... and if I had 60k handy, I'm not sure what I'd do, but those banks pay little interest these days, whether it's offshore or on.
But who said there was a need for the social networking thing? That's what I don't get.
And Google found out the hard way that there was no demand for an alternative.
Be complimentary, not competive. If I want to go beyond forum discussions, then I'll send a Facebook invite so people are in one place.
canuckywoman said:
But who said there was a need for the social networking thing? That's what I don't get.
And Google found out the hard way that there was no demand for an alternative.
Be complimentary, not competive. If I want to go beyond forum discussions, then I'll send a Facebook invite so people are in one place.
I agree. And if being competive means its takes minutes to negotiate from one page to another, then so be it - but who, when then want to just flit in and out and post a short post, wants to spend all that extra time? I don't and I'm not willing to put up with the slowest anymore - when it's a viable up and running, quick site I'll return.
